Camera Obscura
by ArgentNoelle
Summary: Perhaps if he could stay awake forever the bodies would never be anything more than moths. Insects he could squish under a foot. Terrible, yes, but only in numbers. [Ciel, character study]


**warnings:** very dark themes, non-explicit references to Ciel's backstory torture/rape, moth metaphors, disturbing implications, Sebaciel-ish canon moments; manga spoilers

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**Camera Obscura**

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The nightmares don't stop. He just learns how to sleep through them. Physically, he improves each day: he watches himself, a thin, wary-eyed figure in the mirror that seems so doubly not-him. Sometimes, reminding himself that he's taken another's name is the only thing that keeps him in the here and now; sometimes, the disorientation of his own reflection—is the only thing.

He hates it. When he was a child he had thought nothing of his body, except to hate that it betrayed him, the coughs rupturing up from inside, like a foreign body was sucking in his own air, leaving none for himself. In the moments between sleep and wakefulness, when the shadows of his dresser became monstrous things, he thought he could almost feel it. _It_. He had known nothing of terror then.

Beautiful child. He knows he is. He'd had compliments showered at him; innocent things; like the flowers of the field. There were worse things than that. There was Baron Kelvin's look that had so unsettled him; not the first time he had seen such looks. Not the last.

And worse than that.

Beautiful. He knows he is. That's what they called him, along with innocent child, so many words that they twisted in their mouths until it was no longer true, only a mockery. No. Not innocent. Not a child. The sacrifice, the sacrificial victim. The broken doll. He has rejected them all. _Play along_. He had screamed.

It comes to him in the form of moths. That is still the only way he can remember it, although he knows, rationally, that the group of evil revellers had not turned into a swarm, that it hadn't been multitudes of wings, dusty brown, enveloping him, cutting off every breath of air and light, brushing over his skin until the weight of it sank down against the cold hard ground; it was not millions of insect-feet crawling into his mouth and making him retch, it was not moths digging under his clothes, ripping it to shreds with the fast beat of their wings, synchronized in turns. Beat. Beat. Beat.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

It was not, but that is the only way he can remember it, except in his dreams. He doesn't know if his newfound power to sleep through them, which seems so like power in the light of midday, is really that. Perhaps, it is instead a sort of prolonged self-torture; perhaps if he could stay awake forever the bodies would never be anything more than moths. Insects he could squish under a foot. Terrible, yes, but only in numbers. Humanity is so much bigger, and so much more frightening than that.

So he calls them moths: he calls them rats: he calls them worms: anything but the humans he knows they are. There is something horrible, a cannibalistic aspect, to the way humanity preys on itself. And in his dreams, he is still wondering: what did I do wrong? And: why won't they stop? They are human, too? Aren't they?

Is this humanity, then? A demon's honesty can only be refreshing after that.

It is no wonder that the only one he can keep close is the one whom he knows he can trust not at all.

The nightmares reappear in the day, too, in distorted, illusory guises. In painted figures, sparkling with light. The Viscount Druitt speaks, and moths fly out of his throat. His grasping fingers turn to papery wings. _I'll kill that bastard_, he thinks. _I'll kill him, like I (Sebastian) killed all the others_… the Viscount's perfumed smoke rises forth like a magician's illusion, and like the victim of an enchantment, he sinks down into the darkness.

The sounds again. Flesh upon flesh. The breathing, uneven and horrible. His own. Gasping out a name as though it will bring him salvation. _Earlier today, I put on a corset. It hurt_.

_It was like the air was being sucked all out of me_.

_I kept thinking that I didn't have the undergarments on that I should have had. _

_My shoulder uncovered._

_My ankles uncovered_.

_Still, it didn't disturb me. It didn't remind me of moths. Not until now_.

Just a dream.

He begins to wonder if it is his dreams that are the only ones brave or foolish enough to stand against his self-imposed delusion, to show him the truth. In the dreams, it is never moths, it is—

In the dream, they were not just putting on a corset. Perhaps it was some tone of voice, something behind Sebastian's repressed laughter, his careful choice of words. Too close. They are always too close. Sebastian is the only thing that can protect him, and so he wears the darkness like armor. Nothing else can pierce him through that. But perhaps, perhaps…

Perhaps _it_ was in there all along! Perhaps he, too, is human!

There are moments when it is all too plausible. When the demon's eyes don't glow red; when he is not using his supernatural strength and speed. When he is droning on about history, or in paroxysms over cats, when he is listening patiently to Agni's advice and putting on a doting care, then, for a moment, he sometimes thinks (what if HE is human, too?)

(And if so, then we are too close)

(And if so, then perhaps his gloved hands aren't soft with pressed linen after all, but with delicate moth wings)

Perhaps, after all, Sebastian is only a painting of a human, and the darkness contains only paintings of moths. Perhaps—oh, certainly—he himself is only an illusion of a beautiful boy. That is, in fact, the most logical interpretation, because he is everything other than innocent, than pure. He puts it on because he looks good in it, because he looks

_Seductive_

In it.

Thus, there is nothing at all wrong with speaking coyly, to a mere painting of moths, which, after all, only have painted wings that cannot move, except at his command. And if they are ever too close, it is only at his command. And if the demon is ever too hungry, it is only…

Because he made a deal, you see. He gave Sebastian (everything) and in return Sebastian became his knight. And that means that anything Sebastian does is at his command. Except for the parts that are not at his command. But, after all, if one is an actor in a play (and Sebastian is an actor) then must one not play the part?

And Sebastian does think him beautiful. He's said so.

And it does not bother him, not at all. Not when the butler dresses him in the height of fashion, to which the disapproving and envious eyes are drawn; not when the afternoon light slants in between them on a day heavy with paperwork, heavy with silence, and Sebastian teases him out of apathy with dreadful anecdotes; not when he enjoys stolen chocolate from the butler's most carefully crafted creations, shows him that _he has the power to undo everything_. Not when they move together through the chessboard; it is, after all, only an expression of narcissism, and therefore understandable…

Except in his dreams.

.

.

.


End file.
